Friday, 29 March 2013

GW31 Captain Rankings

Here we go then. Most of the names you've become accustomed to are here, perhaps Michu and Cazorla's omission being a talking point. Michu's absence is likely genuine, and in main down to Tottenham's defensive strengths this season. They're probably still in people's minds an all-expansive attacking side but under Villas-Boas this year they have steadily improved to a team with a lot of tactical nous.

Cazorla's absence is more interesting to me and I think is not genuine. He's the next player on this list, 11th after Rooney, actually with the same predicted score 59, or 5.9 FPL pts. Tevez is on the same points too. the model will not take account for Walcott's absence in the team and the assumed greater role Cazorla will take up in the attack. As you can be seen on the InsideFPL Player Database image below Cazorla is on a good run right now.

Never mind who is not in the Captain Rankings, who's in it? It's Bale and Van Persie once again leading the way. Looking at both players numbers and form from the images below it's my opinion that the pair's lack of form is overblown, perhaps sensationalist, if you excuse the normally aggressive use of that word. When the best players have a wobble we like to make something of it. Gareth Bale has averaged 10 pts per 90 mins in his last 6 fixtures with a F.SCORE average of 9.3 to back that up. I think we can forgive him for not scoring in one match. He'll captain my team this week (unless I make a sneaky and ill-advised last minute change!).